Red and grey are no colors
by o0quille0o
Summary: Gaanaru. Rated M for strong hints to sexual relations. The only thing he knows is grey, grey and red, red and grey, nothing else. He knows there must have been something else, sun or sky, but he can't remember...


**This came to me during a sleepless night, and so I wrote it. It could be considered as a sequel to something, you see. Please review, and don't refrein from pointing out any mistakes, I'm trying to learn english and a little help is always welcome. Wierd commas are normal.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, beside ten and twelve red buttons. But they don't really count.**

**Warning: Blood, mild sex, yaoi, angst in some twisted way, and my own insanity. If any of those things scares you, I can perfectly understand your point of view. Just don't read.**

Grey and red. Forever grey and red, always, trapped in a prison where those colors were the only thing he knew, all he could remember. Grey was the color on the walls, the color of his uniform, from the bars and from the light, everything he could touch but didn't want to, everything he could see but no longer cared for. Red was the color of his blood and his hair, all against his now grey skin. He didn't care for those either. He could no longer remember what other colors were like. He had seen grass and flowers, people and snow, he regretted it, he couldn't remember it. But what he missed the most was the sun, the sun and the sky, because they were unreachable and still present. Here, he could touch everything if he wished to, his cell was small and grey, and that was all he knew, with his name, or code name: Gaara, 211. If it was his real name or if it had been given to him, that was already in the category of things he didn't know. Gaara and n°211 were two facts he clung to, because with that, he had some sort of an identity. He had a name and a number, and everything else had nothing more that a name.

The two men in grey uniforms, grey pants and grey shoes, all of it decorated with red buttons, would come today, or tonight, or now. He didn't know their names, only their faces, all grey, grey eyes and grey hair. He had been wondering about the color of his own eyes. He couldn't see them, he had forgotten mirrors since he never saw any. Because they could reflect colors and colors were to be banned from this place.

He quietly followed the two grey uniforms, it was time for his daily - weekly? - torture. He didn't remember why he was being tortured, why they were drawing red blood from his grey skin, careful not to cut deep enough to get to the bones. Because they were white. He had forgotten that too. The man responsible for the torture seemed to never change, always the same man, different from his escort only because he wore a uniform with twelve red buttons. The underlings, his escort, they only had ten red buttons. To him, it was all logical. The more buttons you have, the stronger you are. That was the reason that he had no buttons, just a plane grey shirt and grey pants, and bare, grey feet.

But he had come to face one fact: He was the only one with red hair. So maybe he had a special place, the one whom they'd take the blood, the one they'd carefully cut and hit, the only one they were talking to. They were asking things, he didn't know what, he did no longer hear the words. But twelve red buttons was talking with him, and he saw it as the special treat to his red hair.

Then, when he said nothing, as usual, they'd feed him - always grey and red pills - and send him back to his cell, where he'd sit. He had forgotten the meaning of sleep, too, he had no use for it since his dreams were as grey as the cell he was now so used to. It had a small window, and on the other side of this window, there was another cell, grey, and another, and another, all the same dirty grey and sometimes a little red. Those were the things he could touch because they were the same inside his own little prison, so he didn't care about them. He had watched once, then never again, not showing any interest for grey or red, colors he didn't even recognise as colors, seeing as they were the only ones he knew.

But today, he heard a silent sound of something moving, and that immediately caught his attention. Nothing ever moved. Not even him. You could touch grey and red, but it was inert, it didn't move unless something forced it to move.

So he got up, curious because neither grey nor red did move on its own will, and plopped his head out the small window. He saw the sun. It was bright and yellow, small, it was lying on the ground and he couldn't touch it. It was shiny against grey, it looked very fluffy and soft, and he instantly knew he couldn't touch it. He just couldn't. It was on the other side, it had colors he had forgotten about, completely forgotten they did exist, he only knew the sun was untouchable. He kept staring at it, hypnotised by something new that he already knew but couldn't remember. The sun was something very precious to him and he felt something warm crawl over his grey skin, something nice he immediately clung to, just like his name and number.

Than, the sun moved. It was seated on top of a head, but not a grey head. It was a smooth face, something else he couldn't touch, it seemed soft like earth, it was sun kissed. It was a skin that had been blessed with sun, maybe the sun on top of it, maybe that hair that carried the colors from the outside, colors he had wished for and never seen.

Than the face quit yawning, and he saw the sky. It was even more beautiful than the sun. It was soft and shiny, it was staring at him with surprise and lust, with need. Those eyes were the sky, he thought, and he kept looking at them, knowing that he couldn't touch the sky either, and that made it special, too. He wondered once again what his eyes were like, and wished for them to be something else, something new, something that captivated the sky and the sun and the earth. He didn't really care about the earth, the skin, the face, but he knew it had been blessed with sun, and to him that simple fact made it an important part of what he now saw.

The sun and the sky then tried to talk, random sounds coming out of it, sounds he thought were the birds, because birds he knew, were free. He didn't understand, those were no words like twelve red buttons used, those were songs from birds and he listened to their chirping, wondering how the untouchable sky and sun had been caught and closed into this cage.

From that moment, he changed. He was still going to twelve red buttons, still escorted by ten red buttons, but when he came back, he watched the sky and the sun, and it watched him. He always kept his eyes opened, convinced that they were the reason he was blessed with the view of both sky and sun.

Somehow, he picked up from the chirping that his eyes were the trees and the grass, the free landscape sun and earth were feeding, and he was feeding the birds. And so, they created a balance, an ecosystem all by their own, the two of them, together, in their respective cells.

One day, the sun disappeared, and so did the sky with all his birds. The forest had nothing to grow on, nothing to live from, and he was sure the birds had no place to live. He went searching for them, for the sun, the sky and the birds, for the earth. For the colors. He didn't let ten buttons take him. That day, he learned that ten buttons and twelve buttons had red blood too. All the beasts that lived in the forest were now free, and cried to the birds, trying to imitate their chirping, to find them. And when he found his sun, and his sky, his earth and his birds, they were no longer untouchable. They were close now, and he saw the water inside the sky, and he didn't like it, he wanted to see a blue sky without rain, because rain made the sky grey, and grey was no longer a color.

He wanted to touch it now, he wanted to dry the sky and bring back the sun, he wanted to taste the sea and the earth, he wanted to feel. And so, he did. He learned that the earth could be wet, that it was sweet and warm because it had been blessed by the sun, he learned that the birds were able to do other things than chirp, he was taught that the sun smelled nice and that it was warm, but not burning, that the sky could be fierce and lustful and that all of it was real, material, and that he could touch all of it and that it touched back, and that it had the power to turn his grey skin to pink.

In return, he showed that the forest could live and sing, that it could shine much more than red hair, that it was full of life and that this life was hidden, that you had to search for it and that it came in many different shapes and forms, and that the forest could shine turquoise when you teased it long enough.

And when they met the real sun, the real sky and birds, the real earth and forest, they noticed only two differences: it didn't feel the same, and it didn't smell the same.

When they were asked, they only remembered the codename, the number got lost on the way. That day, Gaara learned that combining sun, sky, earth and birds gave birth to Naruto, and he loved that being with all his heart.


End file.
